A Book Grab by Google

Commentary] A court in the Southern District of New York will soon make a decision that could determine our digital future. A ruling is expected shortly on a proposed settlement of lawsuits filed against Google in 2005 by groups representing authors and publishers claiming that Google's book-scanning project violated copyright. When Google announced its project in 2004, the company said its goal was simple yet far-reaching. Like its search engine, which points people to Web sites, Google's book search product would help people find information in books and direct them to volumes in libraries and bookstores. The project seemed in keeping with the guiding principles of the Internet, which assumes a quid pro quo between search engines and Web sites. That is, sites allow themselves to be copied and indexed as long as search engines such as Google lead people back to the original sites. But as we learned when the settlement was proposed last October, Google's search tool has become a digital bookstore. The settlement outlines business models for creating and selling electronic editions of books, and selling subscriptions to Google's new exclusive library. Whereas the original lawsuit could have helped define fair use in the digital age, the settlement provides a new and unsettling form of media consolidation. [Kahle is founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, and the Open Content Alliance.]